But Uppili is a fan of your brain and mine, too. The speed and efficiency of the human brain and its ability to store memories and to learn awe him.

"Ultra-efficient, high-capacity -- Nothing epitomizes those terms like the human brain," he said. "It operates on only 20 watts of energy. Nothing fascinates us like the brain."

Which explains why he chose to focus his science fair project on making transistors, the building blocks of electronic devices, more like the human brain.

Synapses, which fire the human brain, function using ionic diffusion. So Uppili sought to use ionic conduction to power a transistor, trying to make the electronic device act more brain-like. And, he says, it worked.

"There is no ionic conduction in a normal field effect transistor," he says. So he found a way to add it. And it dramatically increasing the transistor's output potential, he says.

Judges at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair awarded him one of the contest's coveted, highest "grand" awards, the Innovation Exploration Award, sponsored by the California Institute of Technology. His winning project was titled, "The Fabrication and Characterization of Short and Long Term Memory Proton Induced Thin Film Synaptic Transistors."

Uppili also won a $3,000 "first award" in the category of engineering materials and bioengineering for that project.

He and his two fellow innovation prize winners will get a behind-the-scenes visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. They'll also visit Caltech to meet with scientists, present their own work and see what is next in space exploration.

Uppili says he is largely self-made and self-taught as a scientific explorer. He can't remember a time he didn't love electronics and physics and figuring out how things worked.

His paternal grandmother gave him his first Sherlock Holmes book when he was about seven, and the detective's use of deductive reasoning -- along with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's use of language -- immediately beguiled him.

Uppili credits Steve Decker, a teacher at Oregon Episcopal who is also an engineer at Vernier Software & Technology, with providing him with great physics texts to study, fostering his interest in science and engaging in long conversations that motivated him to tackle challenging science problems.

Uppili also plays varsity tennis, loves pickup basketball, sings with a school acapella group, volunteers at a nonprofit that helps foster children and captained the school mock trial team. Not surprisingly, he plans to become an engineer.